Luis Rubio

None of the ills that currently afflict Mexico is especially recent. For centuries, we Mexicans have known corruption, criminality, the wrongdoings of the government, the poor use of public resources and the propensity of diverse communities, above all in certain regions, to rise up and impose their will. If one concurs with these statements, there are at least two questions that would seem pertinent to me: first, what happened in order for all of the above to generate a crisis at this precise moment? Second, if all of this is known, why hasn’t it been resolved? In other words, how is it possible for so many things to have come together over the past few months and from which there appears to be no way out, a circumstance that inevitably tends to stir up unrest and increase the sensation of vulnerability and crisis?

I have been pondering these themes for many months now and meditating on why, but above all how it could be solved? An exchange not long ago in Spain permitted me to see another facet of this disquisition. Spain saw the XX Century in as an underdeveloped country, disorderly, with a bent for hard governments; a nation that exiled many of its best people. However, at the end of that century, Spain had been transformed: it was an ordered country, democratic, fully integrated into Europe and possessing an infrastructure that in quality and quantity does not stop impress. In Spain the combination of leadership, circumstance and geography allowed for an extraordinary transformation; that is, the latter did not happen by chance or by magic, nor was everything that occurred along the way benign.

The contrast between Spain and Mexico could hardly be greater. Although in both nations the population has lived through cataclysmic times, their responses have been very distinct. In Mexico uneasiness, insipidity, disgust with the government and pessimism reign. The economy grows very modestly and problems abound everywhere. In Spain, the economic crisis of the recent years has been highly severe, salaries have fallen not only in real but in nominal terms (that is, many Spaniards earn fewer euros than previously for the same work) and the economy is just beginning to climb. Political effervescence reigns.

Notwithstanding the similarities, the differences are crucial: while in Mexico we suffer from a system of government that not only does not solve even the most elementary problems, such as the security of its citizens, in Spain the quality of the government is extraordinary. The police function, the streets don’t have holes, taxes are paid and people respect the traffic laws. And above all, while the Spanish population can acclaim or reprove the management of each government in particular, the essential part of daily life functions normally thanks to a professional bureaucracy. Contrariwise, in Mexico daily administration is indistinguishable from the government because the key players change every time a new administration comes into power and their criteria are not defined by efficiency or well-being but rather by personal and group advancement. In Mexico we endure a weak government while in Spain there is a strong State that works at the margin of the normal political/legislative conflict that is inherent in everyday political activity.  This became obvious in matters of security with the Chapo’s escape.

Meditating upon this, I come to the conclusion that in Mexico we are experiencing culture shock, while the great success of Spain in the last (several) decades is the product of a cultural transformation. It seems to me that much of what we are living through today in Mexico derives from a frontal shock between the reality and the norms or cultural frameworks that, as a society, characterize us. The problems persist; what’s changed is that now information is ubiquitous.

Although it would be desirable to be able to rely on much better information, for example, of what is taking place when decisions are made in the allocation of resources or how these are spent, what’s relevant is that now it’s impossible to keep information hidden. In fact, the lack of the formalization of governmental transparency exerts the perverse effect of generating rumors and speculations that the technology (the social networks) magnify and render omnipresent. That is, much of what Mexico is undergoing has its origin in the brutal contrast between the discourse and the reality: the expectations that the political culture has shaped in the collective unconscious as well as in the Constitution, on the one hand, and the disorder and deterioration that daily life evidences, on the other. That culture shock has served as a justification of the permanence of the informal economy and the demonstrators’ closing of highways, the absence of effective police forces and governmental corruption. It also explains why Mexicans just laughed when learned about the Chapo’s escape from jail.

Herein the contrast with Spain: that country modernized itself and achieved a seamless cultural transformation. Respect for authority is impressive, as is the quality that would appear to be so trifling as paving the streets. But respect for authority does not translate into respect for the government or the governors: the former speaks to the quality of the State, the latter to the administration of the moment. While we Mexicans know that each government can change the status quo, for good or for ill, in this the Spaniards more closely resemble their partners of northern Europe than us. At the end of the day, what permitted the breaking of the vicious circle was a succession of leaderships that, in combined fashion, transformed their country. But the key lies in that these were annotated by a professional bureaucracy. That’s where it would have to start. It’s not a matter of money but of attitude: the attitude of civilization.

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@lrubiof

                                                                                                                                    Luis Rubio

There’s nothing more pernicious than arrogance and, worse, when combined with the absence of project and vision. Security in Mexico City is perhaps less serious than in many other places in the country, but that doesn’t make it any less razor-edged or much less guarantees that it will not become worse.

In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides tells how Themistocles alienated the allies of Athens by extorting money from them. Anchoring his fleet off a small island, he sent a message saying that he had two powerful deities on his side who would compel them to pay up: Persuasion and Force. The islanders sent back a message saying that they had two equally potent gods on their side: Poverty and Despair. In Mexico City, extortion is advancing at a slow-moving but incessant pace, little by little coming to dominate the economic panorama. To the pay-offs extracted by the PRD governors we must now add those of organized crime. This cannot end well.

Despite all that was censurable about the way the previous federal government managed its security policy, there is one merit that cannot be denied: it achieved keeping the cartels outside of the Federal District (the D.F.), blocking them from extending their tentacles toward the political heart of the country. It is no less than paradoxical that the city government of Marcelo Ebrard, which accomplished nothing for security, benefited from criminality not mounting, despite the unassailable political distance that he maintained from then-President Calderón. Now, with the inexistence of a security strategy in the Federal Government, the D.F. has begun to fall prey to extortion, the inexorable initiation of the growth of the narco-trafficking mafias. Paraphrasing Thucydides, the Force of the past could now end up in Despair…

What’s interesting is not that criminality is growing in the D.F., the way that the charging of dues is being extorted, in that the phenomenon has been hammering at the country for years, but the total lack of response by the City Government. Killings increase, extortion proliferates and theft grows in direct proportion to the degree that the municipal leaders and those of the City Government concern themselves with their next jobs rather than attending to basics. Worse yet, many of those functionaries propitiate extortion as a means of financing their campaigns and their deep pockets; corruption has become the modus operandi.  It’s not by chance that impunity has become the norm. The Government of the D.F. is so confident that it presently devotes itself to formulating a new constitution before the foundations of the city would be able to resist it.

This produces a peculiar scenario: enormous and growing insecurity, lousy public services and, to top it off, an arrogant rhetoric that not only refuses to recognize the fact that insecurity is growing dangerously, but keeps talking about historical statistics. The discourse and its tone reveals a local government focused on what’s important (its political future) and disinterested in what affects the citizenry, above all regarding trivial issues such as security, traffic, potholes in the streets and economic development; if to that one adds endless demonstrations as well as formal and “informal” taxes, it becomes obvious there is no understanding of the cost –and disincentive- that exists to creating jobs in the city. In addition, the problem of extortion, a territorial crime, goes hand in glove with the police, whom it corrupts, and ushers in violence because it entails relentless vying for physical space.

Instead of attending to the crime wave that is approaching, the local government has been eager to change the legal status of the city, a matter that appeared to be essential prior to the beating of the dominant party at the polls, but that is absolutely irrelevant for the average citizen. The constitution of the 32nd state sounds good in the discourse, but is highly dangerous for the country as a whole due to the risk that the moods of the local governor -as the cases of Lopez Obrador and Ebrard showed (2000‒2012)- would create a conflagration with the Federal Government, a much more transcendent and touchy issue than what is accepted in public. Why does a government that is not a good government want independence? Might one interject here that its exceptional attention to (and protection of) taxi drivers and other special-interest groups and their capacity of mobilization reveals its true proclivity? Why not better protect the man in the street from the abuses of the City Government, from the delegates, from the police and the PRD, all sworn to extortion, each by their own modus operandi and means?

Instead of getting lost in cabinet resignations, made-to-order constitutions and the protection of interests that make an attempt against the citizenry, the City Government could analyze two successes that are undeniable. The Uber taxi company and the El Torito breathalyzer program are good examples of where Mexico City does indeed work: Uber has afforded the citizenry a safe means of transport that compensates for, at least in part, the shortcomings of the government and its disinterestedness in matters of security. El Torito is a great example of how a space of legality with incentives and clear rules can be instituted. Uber ties in with the objective behind that of el Torito in exemplary fashion: it allows the city to function, its restaurants and bars to generate employment without placing the citizenry at risk of accidents. Both constitute novel paradigms: instead of “regulating them”, the City Government should foster and promote them, converting them into the model of what must be done. The question is, whose side is the government on: the side of the citizenry or the side of the corporatist interests that harass and threaten it?

At this point in time, a little compass wouldn’t be at all superfluous in the City Government.

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@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

What is peace? Is it simply the absence of war? Kant thinks not. These are core questions that Kant analyzes in Perpetual Peace. Kant affirms that if peace is no more than a truce and is directed toward both parties regaining strength for their next attack, if peace is no more than the continuation of war through political means, if peace is no more than the successful subjugation of one party by another -then there is no real peace. Real peace, according to Kant, requires the rule of law within the state and among all contenders. That is, it requires that all who are in agreement with peace believe in it and assume it as theirs. In political terms, what is required for peace is legitimacy. If we translate this into Mexican politics, Kant would upbraid the political parties and the government because it is evident that they do not accept the rule of law, in that they see pacts and laws as a means of elimination of the contender in the next contest and not as competition in which all enjoy the same rights, independently of whether some win and others lose.

The problem of power in Mexico ascribes to two dynamics: the first refers to the relations between political parties and politicians. In this dimension, there is permanent conflict and, at the same time, functionality. Although it would appear paradoxical, the two planes are     faithful components of the political life of the country: the last years have demonstrated the existence of capacity of negotiation, articulation of legislative bills and cooperation among political parties and politicians; on the other hand, there persists the propensity to delegitimize the rival, dispute the cleanliness of the electoral processes and assume that legitimacy is measured in terms of who wins and not whether everyone complies with the rules of the game. The tangible fact is that Mexican politics continues to be founded on corruption (but now extended to all parties, not exclusively to the PRI) and on the pursuit of power by any means, regardless of the cost.

The existence of game rules is one more inconvenience that the political class sees as a cost of being in the game and not as a guideline to which it must submit without further ado. The only thing that’s important is power and there’s no limit whatever in the fight to attain it, in good measure because power continues to be a zero-sum game: What one wins the other loses and that’s all there is to that. Another way of expressing this is that there is no worse enemy of the political class than the existence of checks and balances because these delimit its capacity for abuse. The latter derives from that there is no acknowledgment that Mexican society is a diverse, disperse and complex one in which no political party or person represents the whole. There is no acceptance that the political parties solely represent portions of the electorate and that their legitimacy emanates from the construction of governing coalitions and from respect for the rights of minorities. The power is not absolute; thus, it is indispensable to institutionalize effective mechanisms for the representation and distribution of power that confer legitimacy on the governor and on the exercise of power.

The other dynamic of the problematic of power is that it stems from the relationship between politicians and citizens. In contrast with relations among politicians, where the law of the jungle or that of the mightiest prevails, in our political structure the citizen rather represents a nuisance: in Mexico the political class is protected and isolated from the citizenry and enjoys mechanisms that permit it to disregard the latter. There is no better example of this circumstance than the way that the reelection of legislators was approved in the most recent electoral reform: while in democracies that respect themselves the objective of the reelection is to bring the representatives closer to those they represent, obliging them to respond to the demands and interests of the citizenry, the manner in which reelection will function in Mexico is by means of the approval of the respective political party. That is, the political bosses will have a veto over reelection, a factor that curtails the citizen-representative liaison: the nuance that renders reelection irrelevant.

Perhaps there is no better way to examine the distance existing between institutionalization of power in Mexico and consolidated democracies than the study of the origin of the latter, above all at this moment of the 800th Anniversary of the publication of the pillar of the Rule of Law in civilized and democratic countries. In its essence, the Magna Carta was the consecration on paper of that the law is above the ruler. It was at Runnymede on June 15, 1215, that the idea of the law standing above the government first acquired contractual form. On signing it, King John I accepted that he would no longer get to make the rules as he went along. From that acceptance flowed, ultimately, all the rights and freedoms that civilized nations take for granted: uncensored media, security of property, equality before the law, habeas corpus, regular elections, sanctity of contract, jury trials.

In 1215, England was an infinitely less developed country than the Mexico of today. It is time that we Mexicans recognize the costs of our permanent incivility, proclivity for conflict and poor economic results, all of which remit, directly or indirectly, to the absence of political legitimacy. That legitimacy was lost in the 70s due the abuse of power and the economic crises. Today it is time to construct a new legitimacy from the reform of power.

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@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

Beyond the problems –structural and temporary- that aggrieve Mexico, what’s most striking for me as observer is the absence of a national conversation between the government and the society. Particularly notorious is the existence of two worlds: that of the government (really, the small nucleus that decides within the government) and that of the social networks. These are two planets that fail to recognize each other, they mutually ignore and are contemptuous of each other, doubtlessly the heritage of the authoritarian past: the government spoke, the population pretended that it was hearing, but no one listened. The question is whether it is conceivable, in this digital age and of the ubiquity of information, for things to turn out well without dialogue.

The phenomenon is reproduced in other ambits, although less visibly. On the board of directors of one of the largest multinationals they applaud themselves on having received the President of the Republic and several of his collaborators; in some of the grandest enterprises of Mexico they find it strange that they have never had access to the President or his Cabinet. It is inevitable to hear radically distinct views of the direction the country is taking in each of those spaces.

The announcements of the legislature (and of some political parties) are particularly revealing of the vast abyss that separates the society from its politicians: a given law has been approved, they tell us, so the reality will change. The Federal Government dispatched a similar message when it argued that the problems of the past several months are not due to its decisions, or to its inaction, but instead to the resistance of specific interests to its reforms. On the governmental and legislative side one reality is experienced, and on that of the society another very distinct one. When the bill relative to the constitution of the Federal District was approved in the Senate, one Tweeter responded to this way of seeing the world with singular eloquence: “Don’t anyone worry anymore, because surely tomorrow a law will come out against narco-blockades and everything will be settled”.

The absence of a national conversation on the country’s problems and the public policies proposed to confront them translate not only into incredulousness and distrust, but also into the risk of anomy, that is, of a general alienation that accentuates the distances between governors and the governed and that impedes the progress that we all supposedly seek.

There are two ways to conceive of the problem. One is to focus on the causes and the other is to look for ways to deal with it. While the two processes are necessary, paying systematic attention to the causes leads down a dead-end street because no one wants to give in. For its part, the initiation of a conversation can lead to both parts, society and government, beginning to understand the complexity that each confronts. The dialogue would oblige the government to understand what’s bothering the society and to recognize that not everything that it demands is absurd and, perhaps more relevant, that there is greater receptivity than that imagined in the governmental corridors. An opening to interaction would prompt the society to realize that the governors are not as obtuse or ignorant as thought and to recognize the real restrictions under which they operate. Much of what goes on in the government does not respond to what the society sees as necessary and many of the things that appear obvious and that are repeated in the social networks are absurd by any measure. Both sides would benefit from greater understanding of the other.

How to start a dialogue? Obviously an open exchange is not possible in a country of 115 million inhabitants. However, there are a thousand and one ways in which an exchange could advance that would contribute to constructing a space of greater sobriety in discourse and, therefore, of civility in terms of the future. Only by way of example, there is the model that the Americans call “town hall meetings”, where, in an auditorium, some one or two hundred persons meet with the president –or with key public servants- with a flexible format of questions and answers that is transmitted by TV. The rules of civility obligate a certain behavior, which in some cases leads to excluding potential troublemakers but the idea is simple: to exchange points of view. What matters is not the format but the fact of conversing with the people to explain and attempt to convince, something that has been absent in Mexican politics. Good arguments can arrive at comprehension and recognition. And legitimacy.

The great virtue of the PRIist political system of the first half of the past century, above all in contrast with the authoritarian regimes of South America, was that it allowed for stability and economic progress. That system preferred cooptation and negotiation to violence. Its great defect was that while the South American societies ended their dictatorships and became democratized, Mexico’s preserved the authoritarian culture of the past, something that even the PANists did not alter. With the lack of an alternative, and due to the futility of theatrical acts within such a polarized context, a national conversation could begin to wear down those fortifications that corrode us.

Deep down, Mexico’s challenge is that of concluding the transition -political, social, economic, cultural, industrial, but above all philosophical- presently at a standstill. Jacqueline Peschard noted that the recently approved legislation in matters of transparency requires a new form of governing, sustained on opening and social participation. I would extend that to national life: progress is inconceivable in the digital and globalization age without transparency and mutual persuasion. That is a task of leadership.

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@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The true transcendence of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was its exceptional character in the public life of Mexico. Although its economic impact has been extraordinary –constituting Mexico’s principal engine of economic growth-, its exceptional importance lies in the fact that it was conceived –and has functioned- as a means of affording confidence to investors. Before NAFTA existed, foreign investment did not grow due to its lack of a legal framework that guaranteed permanence of the rules. That is, NAFTA represented recognition by the political system that the existence of capricious regulations, expropriations without a justified cause and discrimination in favor of certain interests constituted insurmountable obstacles to the growth of investment. Its exceptionality lies in that the Mexican government accepted limits to its capacity for action when face to face with those investors and in this altered one of the core features of the so-called “system”.

In its origin, and in its original conception, the objective of initiating a negotiation of a North American business agreement was the creation of a mechanism that would bestow long-term confidence on the investor. The context within which that objective was procured is important: Mexico at the time was emerging from a stage of financial instability, high inflationary levels, bank expropriations and, in general, an investment regime that rejected foreign investment and typically sought to limit private investment. Although the respective regulations had been changed by then, foreign investors did not display an inclination to invest in the country as the government of the time intended. NAFTA ended up being factual recognition that the government had to take a much more audacious step to attract that investment.

The negotiation of NAFTA constituted a milestone in Mexico’s political life because it entailed a cluster of “disciplines” (as trade negotiators denominate them) that are nothing other than impediments to a government acting as it likes. Acceptance of this aggregate of disciplines implies the decision to self-limit, that is, to accept that there are rules of the game and a severe price to pay on violating them. In a word, the government relinquished power in order to gain credibility, in this case in terms of investment. And this cession of power permitted the country to generate an enormous growth engine in the form of foreign investment and exports. Without that ceding, the country would have had all sorts of difficulties these last twenty years. In contrast, through NAFTA (and the great aid of the monetary remittances sent by Mexicans residing in the U.S.) the North American economy became our main source of economic growth.

At present, while foreign investment continues to flow with regularity and incrementally, the problem confronting economic development appertains to the lack of confidence generated by the absence of reliable rules, and the permanence of the latter, within the country. That is, while NAFTA solved the trust problem for investment from the outside, Mexico’s current problem comprises the absence of confidence for the Mexican Everyman, including the domestic business and investor.

The lack of confidence arises from the fact that our governors can say yes or no based on their own personal, political or partisan computations, without concern for whether their decision might be in violation of the law. That circumstance is the one that makes Mexico a country dependent on one man, thus impeding the consolidation of plans, projects or careers, because everything is curtailed by the duration of the six-year presidential term.

What some cynical observer termed the “sexennial metric system” is a national reality that even the PANist governors did not transform. The propensity to reinvent the wheel and negate the merit of the whatever existed whenever a new governor comes on the scene has consequences in the most diverse ambits and exerts the effect of distancing the government from the society and rendering it triflingly responsive to its demands but, above all, generating an environment of assuredness that affects all decisions apropos to savings, investment and personal, family, and entrepreneurial development.

Mexico needs to avoid that provenance of uncertainty for Mexicans, just as NAFTA did for foreigners. Without the Rule of Law that creates sources of credible certainty, the country will be permanently impeded from functioning.

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@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The elections are over, now comes the tallying. For some the elections went well, for others poorly, but all have to deal with the new reality. There are many important lessons to be learned.

A succinct rundown of what I observed in the elections and during the subsequent days is the following: in the gubernatorial races, except in  the states of Campeche and Colima, the voters penalized the party in power: it turns out that voting was much more productive for those who are upset than abstaining from casting their ballot or resorting to annulling it; the Morena (Lopez Obrador’s) Party was the big winner, followed hard on by the Verde Party; the PAN and the PRD are the big losers, both due to internal divisory turmoil; the PRI retained its position in Congress, emblematic of the capacity to buy and manipulate votes more than its having been abruptly overhauled. Today there are two actors in the arena that will surely compete between themselves in 2018: Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), and Jaime Rodríguez (Bronco), the new governor of Nuevo León elected on the independent ticket.

There are explanations for each of these factors, but what seems most important to me to emphasize is that the Pact for Mexico turned out to be lethal for the PAN and the PRD; it’s hard to believe that the result for the PRI in Congress reflects something distinct: except for the reforms eventually transforming the country and those parties capitalizing on that, the cost of the perception of paralysis and the sensation that the opposition disappeared is unfathomable.

Each party and candidate confronted particular circumstances but the result reflects a more sophisticated electorate than appeared to be so at first glance. In the state of Querétaro, for example, the voters made it clear that they wanted to avoid one party from staying in power, despite the exiting governor being popular and widely recognized. On the other hand, the elections confirmed that the average voter is willing to sell his vote and is honorable in complying with his part of the bargain: perhaps this is not praiseworthy from the electoral standpoint, but it speaks of a capacity, and above all a disposition, to comply with contracts and agreements, something not to be held at all in contempt in other ambits given the absence of an effective judicial system.

It may be that the paramount lesson that the elections reveal is that the country finds itself faced with a problem of essence: the political system doesn’t work. The voters may be increasingly sophisticated in their manner of casting their vote or messaging but that does not compensate for the dysfunctionality of the system in its entirety and its lack of representativeness, and that’s the crux of the matter.

Mexico has for decades been trying to change things so that nothing changes. Certainly, the economy has changed a great deal but, in the mode of Il Gattopardo, even the unmentionable has been done to preserve the old system’s benefits and privileges. While no one can deny the enormous advances on diverse fronts, the power structure remains the same, with the exception of the incorporation of the PAN and the PRD into the same ancestral corruption: everything has been changed so that nothing would change. Now the cost of this is visible by any reckoning.

The present government espoused the mantra of the last decades that a set of reforms was urgent and that these, in themselves, would transform the country. It was said that the problems were “over-diagnosed”; what was never said was that, in order for them to bear fruit, the reforms had to modify the power structure in general and that in each reformed sector. Today it appears obvious that what’s lacking is actual governing and that the reforms, necessary as they are, are not feasible in the absence of a government capable of   fulfilling its duty. The renouncing of the transcending reform, the educative one, is a flagrant example of the absence of vision and perspective or, at the least, of a huge perversion of priorities.

The heart of the matter lies in that it’s not possible to attempt to change the country as the current government vowed it would if the function of power as well as its distribution is not brought to the table. A reform of the country –the same in a specific sector as in general- cannot be carried out if the number one criterion is not to affect groups close to the power structure; and success in reforming cannot be attempted if the criterion underlying the reform is that of not altering the power structure. To reform is nothing other than affecting vested interests; if that is not wanted or cannot be done, the reform is impossible.

What’s to be done? I only see two possible scenarios. One is to continue pretending that nothing’s going on, that the electoral result legitimatizes that “strategy”. The other scenario, the coveted one, is for the political class to recognize the urgency to act.

The risk of doing nothing is the eventual collapse of the system: it could be that the total political arrangement would come plunging down (sufficient to observe Russia as an obvious illustration), that the anti-system watersheds that proliferate all over grow and become unstoppable, or that the current situation provokes the advent of a reactionary movement that undermines not only what has been achieved with so many hardships for so long, but that it returns the country to the (figurative) Stone Age. Venezuela no longer seems inconceivable.

What the political class and the government don’t understand is the “what for” of their function. Beyond their interests as a group, its work must come down to earth with regard to systematic and substantive improvements in transforming terrains such as productivity, legality, education and corruption. As long as this does not occur, the strident sound of the political downward turn will continue to erode the legitimacy of the system and the viability of the country. In addition to that of its own interests.

The present moment proffers –and demands- an exceptional opportunity for a great leader to transform the country. That leadership could materialize from the government itself or derive from some of the actors who have displayed their natural gifts and remarkable capacity for action and recovery. Whoever seizes that opportunity will decide the future.

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@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

There are two indisputable facts in the results of last Sunday’s elections: on the one hand, the government’s party achieved maintaining its position in Congress, which constitutes a victory under any leveling device. On the other, there is wide-ranging evidence of grave social malaise at all levels, which the Nuevo Leon independent candidate and winner, “el Bronco” epitomized (76% disapprove of the direction the country is taking, according to BGC). These would seem to be incompatible and contradictory circumstances, but they are not. The combination is, instead, a faithful reflection of the intricate reality within which the country lives and breathes. The big question concerns what the government will do with its victory: Will it persist in its allegation of already having reformed the country and that all that’s missing now is to await the fruits ripe for the picking and that will appear on their own? Or, will the electoral result morph into the opportunity to construct a capacity of government that effectively renders it possible for its reforms to bear fruit? Although these appear similar, they are radically distinct projects.

It is not difficult to describe the picture of what transpired last week. On the strictly electoral side, intermediate elections, while each is unique, are always run by party hacks, whose machines bring the vote out at whatever cost and where the PRI enjoys an enormous advantage. That very political machine was what had made the PAN lose more than one hundred seats to the PRI in 2009, so it’s not surprising that it had the contrary effect on this occasion. It is also noteworthy that the PRI machine was assisted, in perverse fashion, by those promoting to annul the vote as a means of protest. That action had the effect of altering the denominator, thus adding to the PRI’s total congressional numbers. Paradoxes that are dealt by life: no one knows who he or she works for.

On the side of the anger and disgust, the causes are many and multiple, some objective and others psychological, but all count and, more importantly, they add up. For some the scourge is the insecurity, for others the taxes. For yet others, the flagrant corruption. For all, the governmental paralysis has been astounding and its coronation with the decision to suspend the educative reform appears to be clear evidence of a governmental system that doesn’t work. The state of Nuevo León summed up the dynamic that the country is experiencing because there a candidate turned the society’s anger into a campaign platform, the outgoing governor being the perfect example of what the population repudiates and reproves.

The problem isn’t new and isn’t the fault of the present administration. Columnist Félix Cortés cited the case of the votes cast for Cantinflas, who for decades was a means by which the population expressed its choler. What’s relevant here is, as Cortés argues, that the political class never understood, and paid even less attention to the profound message that the Cantinflas vote entailed.  That is, the problem is an old one but it’s piling up, and tends to mushroom as expectations accelerate, these multiplying by the instantaneous communication given free range by telephones and the social networks. In contrast with Spain, where there are, or where there are possible, alternative institutional mechanisms for channeling the uneasiness, in Mexico that route is virtually impossible, becoming a hidden threat to stability.

It is due to the latter that what the government decides to do with its triumph is transcendental. In view of its history to date, above all that of the past several months, one would expect that the government will declare itself the winner and close the door. From its perspective, it is easy to claim that the protesters of groups such as the State Coordination of Education Workers of Guerrero State (CETEG) or the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE) are mere rabble-rousers who have been repudiated at the ballot boxes; that businessmen who feel pressured by interminable requirements and by the absence of an environment that generates trust, are no more but a bunch of complainers who always exaggerate, in addition to being accustomed to evading payment of their taxes instead of getting down to work; and that opinion makers comprise a clutch of opportunists dwelling in ivory towers.

It would be easy to discount all of these, but that would not solve the key conundrum: would such a reading of events make it easy to conclude the governmental term in peace? It is ironic –and revealing- that, in this context, the government recently argued before the Organization for Co-operation and Development (OECD) that there are historical antecedents for the distrust and that this has gone on for decades. The government official was referring to Greece, but the argument is equally relevant for Mexico where the current government has bet on ever larger spending programs, a higher deficit and debt, precisely what brought about the financial crises of the seventies to the nineties.

Beyond the reasons for the electoral outcome, the reality of the country remains the same: an apparently uncontainable subversion in the South; a population without a future due to the lack of an educative system capable of endowing it with the capacity to compete in the world of globalization; an economy structurally incapable of producing high growth rates; a society beleaguered by insecurity and a government without a strategy to create a modern police force and a judiciary at all levels of government; an effete and dysfunctional system of government that does not govern, that does not satisfy the most minimal requisites of performance and that does not create conditions for the society to live in peace and prosper.

The election did bring about a stark dilemma: either the established politicians do it or the independents will. This is not something minor and the challenge is monumental.

No one can dispute the electoral result, but the dilemma persists: victory for what? To continue denying the population the opportunity to prosper? or to enforce the reforms and create a new platform with a view to the future? The former would guarantee that 2018 would prove to be the election of the agitators, whatever their colors. The latter would at least offer the population an opportunity of hope.

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@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The Mexican Army is characterized by a contradictory array of paradoxes. On the one hand, it is an institution that enjoys the greatest prestige and popular recognition that the country has to offer. On the other, with the possible exception of some police forces, it is the most criticized entity with respect to human rights. Over the last decade it has been involved in police work for which it is not prepared nor trained, while it has been prohibited from acting in highly dangerous zones, above all those characterized by intense guerilla activity. In addition, the military corps continues to exist under typical XX-Century political logic, incompatible with the ambience of transparency inherent in the era of globalization and ubiquity of information. The result of these paradoxes is that the Mexican soldier is commanded to give what he cannot, he is criticized for what is not his responsibility and a new legal and institutional structure has not yet been created that would allow him to enter fully into the XXI Century.

The challenge of the Army is not different from that of the country. Similar to the economy or to the government, the shackles of the past have impeded the Army from transforming itself into an institution compatible with the times we live in today. Just as there persists in the economy an enormous portion that is not competitive and just as the government operates within a framework of paternalistic practices and vetoes its own modernization, the Army suffers from the past and does not adapt itself to the present. The consequence of these circumstances for the government or for the economy is noted in unremitting poverty, pathetic growth rates and high unemployment. The consequence for the Army is that, in the words of a popular saying, it is sent “to war without a rifle” but with all of the responsibilities. Thus, the soldiers end up reviled, without the tools to act within the context that the society and the national and international human rights community expect from them.

I see two great issues here: on the one hand, an Army from which results are demanded without it possessing the tools or the formation that would be necessary to achieve these. The best example of this is that of obliging soldiers to perform police tasks for which they are not prepared. Being a soldier is not the same as being a policeman. No one should be surprised that this incompatibility generates unpleasant consequences. The U.S. experience in Iraq is exactly the same: the issue is not our soldiers but our politicians.

The second matter is that of the relations between civilians and the military. The authoritarian political system of the XX Century tied with a professional Army headed by its own military. Proof of the peculiarity of the political transition through which Mexicans have lived from the sixties is the fact that the formal relationship between civilians and the military has not changed an iota despite that at least the formal structure of our system of government has adopted democratic forms. The result has been prejudicial to the Army. In plain terms, the Army has been the scapegoat for an incomplete political transition, which has gone wrong.

The political transition produced the situation of the insecurity under which we live today.  We went from an authoritarian regime that controlled everything to an open system that lost all control. Security was maintained thanks to that an all-powerful federal government administered the criminality and exercised an iron hand on the society as a whole. The gradual collapse of the old system (which was not voluntary but rather the product of the normal evolution of society and the economy) was not accompanied by the construction of governmental capacity at the state and municipal levels. What the federal government used to do, nobody does now.

In the end, the Army was the sole institution with the capacity, power and resources to maneuver the abyss that the politicians created, thanks to their lack of vision and foresight. Deploying the Army to attend to problems of criminality was a quick fix that, however, did not reduce the distrust of the very politicians who ordered the soldiers to the field. The result was a mandate that was never clear, a responsibility that the politicians never assumed and an Army that had to carry out tasks for which they were neither trained nor prepared, all of this in the absence of an adequate legal framework. The Army followed orders because there was no alternative and it had no choice, but those who dispatched it to the front never planned, or constructed, the modern police force that should have replaced it. The Army was in the end left hanging.

The frail and incomplete democracy has hindered the consolidation of a new regime that redefines the relation between the government and the citizenry, which explains the persistence of innumerable authoritarian spaces. Inevitably the same ambiguity that exists in matters of relations between the political system and the citizenry is also observable in the relations between civilians and the military.

Blaming the soldiers for potential excesses is an atrocity that is the product of the convoluted environment that characterizes Mexican politics and its politicians. Events such as that of Tlatlaya (where the Army is accused of killing civilians) should lead us to construct a distinct political institutional structure that deals, once and for all, with the need for a proper structure of governance and security, the lack of which affects the country and that, inexorably, passes through the delicate and unjust nature of the relationship between civilians and the military and that the members of the armed forces endure every day.

Those who chastise the Army should ask themselves what the situation of security would be like without its presence.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof

Luis Rubio

The achievement of stability and high growth rates after the revolutionary era was nearly miraculous and contrasted with the interminable South American dictatorships. Everything suggested that Mexico had procured a successful and permanent formula. It worked until it ran out.

But what is significant –and what was of virtue- of that era was the fact that the diverse components of the clockwork that made it work in general were in sync. The economic autarchy coupled with the authoritarian political system and the structure of vertical controls that was a key component of the PRIist system to keep the state governors in line. The scheme responded to the reality of the moment in which it was constructed –the post-revolutionary epoch, and, above all, the post-War era- and permitted the country to progress.

Of course, the fact that there was progress in some ambits did not imply that the system was free of contradictions. When these made themselves heard, the system responded: this was how it acted with (annulled) independent presidential candidacies when these presented and how it repressed guerilla movements and, towards the end of the era, the student movement. The preference was always cooption and that ever-so-PRIist tactic: subject the dissent to the general corruption of the system under the aegis that there is no greater loyalty than that springing from complicity.

The problems began when the contradictions stopped being minor and the traditional response no longer solved the problems. For example, without recognizing that it was a structural problem emanating from the evaporation of    monies to finance imports, President  Echeverría responded to the (very mild) recession of 1971 with a sudden and massive increase in public expenditure, breaking with all of the fiscal equilibria known until then. Fiddling with it “just a little” ended up undermining the old stability, destroying the confidence of the population and positioning the country on the threshold of hyperinflation.

The equilibria now broken, attempts at a solution eventually began, all of these conceived to preserve the essence of the PRIist system but in turn supplying the economy with oxygen: a flagrant contradiction, but logical within its context. Russell Ackoff, a U.S. thinker, wrote that “there are four ways of treating a problem ― absolution, resolution, solution and dissolution ― and the greatest of these is dissolution”. Of all these, says Ackoff, only dissolution allows eliminating the problem because it entails the redesign of the context within which it arose. That is, what Mexico required (and requires) was an integral transformation similar to that which today’s successful nations experienced –each on its own terms- such as Korea, Chile and, before the euro, Spain and Ireland.

What in fact was done was to attempt to respond to the problems by seeing to their most evident manifestations and trusting that those would disappear (“absolve” in Ackoff’s terminology). That is how it went through diverse political reforms as well as with partial and fragmentary economic liberalization. It was not that there was bad faith; rather, the ultimate objective resided in the preservation of the essence of the political system and its beneficiaries. Viewed from this perspective, the most emblematic of the electoral reforms (1996) was nothing other than going from a one-party system to a three-party structure, and not to full democracy. The expanded regime extended the benefits to new participants and created a scheme of competition that did not alter the essence of the old system, but only “democratized” it.

What it did not solve were the contradictions. One by one, these have come to wage an attack on occasion in creative, but always limited, ways. In one epoch the support was procured of “men-institutions”, responsible persons who understood what hung in the balance and who took care that the equilibria were not shattered (and there were –and there are- many more of these figures than one might imagine); in another epoch “autonomous” and “citizen” entities were constructed under the notion that the members of their boards would not lend themselves to shady dealings and that they would guarantee the seriousness and reliability of their actions in electoral matters, on issues of economic regulation and, most recently, in matters of energy. I do not dispute the logic, convenience or potential of this type of response, but it is evident that they have not been sufficient for solving problems that can only be solved with a much more polished transformative vision. They work while they work and then they begin to be costly. In any case, they depend on the individual person.

The elections are nearly upon us, the candidates and parties attack and counterattack each other but, save for exceptional cases, these do not offer attractive alternatives. In the case of the governorships, who end up being proprietors of the lives and souls of their entities, the difference between a good one and a poor one is absolute and that’s why the elections are so hair-raising. The majority only want to get rich or utilize each post as a stepping stone to reach the next one. As an old politician once told me, “some do their job but the majority devote themselves to constructing the next one”.

That’s what Mexicans have got to work with. In Miguel Hidalgo, in the Federal District, a peculiar case is unfolding: a rough-spoken but effective candidate, as only she can be, and without any ambition for another job, contending for the opportunity to govern the local government (which de facto finances the entire Federal District) but that has been badly managed and misgoverned for decades. Xóchitl Gálvez gets my vote because she is a straight-arrow person who is devoted to what she does and who does what has to be done.

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@lrubiof

FORBES – MAYO 2015

It would seem to be patently obvious that in politics there’s no worse evil than fighting reality, but that’s precisely what the government has been doing recently.  The government might like what the U.N. court reporter has concluded about torture in Mexico or not, but it can’t simply reject its investigation. Even if the analysis were mistaken, the worst strategy is that of categorical rejection: exactly the same management that it does with internal criticism, as if everyone were its enemy. Machiavelli wrote that “There are three types of intelligence: one understands things by itself; the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither by itself nor through others. The first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind is useless”. In this matter, the government appears to conduct itself like the Machiavelli’s third definition.

In the eighties the country chose to integrate itself economically into the world but, in its first iteration, it pretended that it could be part of the international business circuits, attract foreign investment and technology but maintain its primitive ways of politics as usual internally. The contradiction was flagrant and led to interminable disputes in the most diverse forums. On one of his visits to Washington State in the U.S., for example, President de la Madrid breakfasted with the news of columnist Jack Anderson denouncing diverse cases of corruption in the de la Madrid’s government. The column could not have been worse in content or come at a worse time for inflicting severe damage on the visit before it had even begun. The government rejected the information with all of its vehemence, but did not achieve neutralizing the critics. The same happened with the murder of U.S. Drug Agent Enrique Camarena and the annual evaluation of Mexico’s cooperation in matters of narcotrafficking. Each case sunk the government deeper and deeper.

Beyond the indignation that that type of accusation aroused in our politicians, above all due to the moral superiority that they involve, it’s no secret from anyone that the country is enduring an infinity of cases of corruption, torture, police abuse, the incompetence of the judiciary, and lack of respect for the rights of the citizens. Similarly evident is that there are no easy solutions to these ills, even if there were the best will and strategy. What’s absurd is to pretend that these ills do not exist, that they are foreign to our reality.

By the time Carlos Salinas took over the presidency in 1988, the lesson had been learned. The great difference between the two administrations was not the general strategy but the recognition that it was impossible to maintain the fiction that the external world is distinct from the internal, that a dual discourse can be maintained or that the leak in the dike can be plugged with one finger. Instead of emphatically rejecting the accusations coming from the outside, Salinas opted for assuming them and at least pretended to solve them. That’s how, for example, the National Human Rights Commission came into being. Rather than confronting, he joined the critics, although in the final analysis the solution was nothing more than cosmetic. Viewed in retrospect, the true change was less one of essence –political modernization oriented toward creating a developed country did not take shape-, but the form was crucial because there was at least minimal congruence between the internal and the external discourse.

Thirty years later it appears that we have returned to the eighties, only that, as Marx said, the second time as a farce. I don’t know whether torture is practiced in the country nor is it obvious to me that fourteen cases would be sufficient for a summary trial or something in that respect; that said, it would appear infinitely more sensible, in this example, to request aid from the U.N. for combating the cases that do exist and the circumstances that produced them, rather than deny that reality and do battle with the community of nations. Worse yet, no member nation of the International Court of Justice and similar bodies can react in that fashion. It’s not logical and, worse, it’s counterproductive. A government should add rather than subtract before anything else.

The far-ranging issue is that we cannot return to the past nor can we deny the reality of the world in which we live, the latter entailing ubiquity of information and globalization not only of the economy but also of values and criteria. The longer the government takes to accept that that’s not the road to the future the worse the future will be for its own efforts and, above all, the economic and political performance of the country. These are not minutiae by any means.

www.cidac.org

@lrubiof